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Columnist Frank Patalong: "Eat in the waiting area"
Photo:
Victoria Jung / DER SPIEGEL
Düsseldorf Airport, early September: We are way too early.
The hall is almost deserted, and there is only a minimal line in front of the check-in.
After ten minutes everything is done that would otherwise take an hour, and the security check also takes minutes.
"Then let's go eat something," says Fiona, but that proves to be difficult.
Almost all shops are closed, only a supposed "street food" stand is open in the departure area.
Eat in the waiting area, where the masks fall.
The stewardesses sound like cracked records
It doesn't feel good.
We're queasy, and it's not getting any better.
Every single seat on the plane is occupied.
It's a Covid nightmare, there is nothing to gloss over it.
The fuss about optimal air conditioning in planes is a sedative intended joke.
You sit 40 centimeters behind and in front of someone and rub shoulders with your neighbor, that's how it is and no different.
If you really wanted to be safe from infection, you needed at least diving equipment.
Instead, the plane is full of full poles that believe face masks belong under the nose or chin.
The stewardesses sound like records with cracks: "Would you please put on the mask?"
It doesn't help, the stupid rate is 10-15 percent.
A year earlier, flying was part of my routine.
There were years when I had almost 100 take-offs and landings, at some point Miles & More sent me a frequent flyer card.
It was like driving the bus.
When I was seven I flew to the Black Sea
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Vacation in the corona crisis: where to go during the autumn vacation?
I was born baby boomers into a completely different world.
It wasn't until 1975 that my grandparents discovered the concept of vacation for themselves.
In the next 25 years they drove maybe ten times from the Ruhr area to the Sauerland, that was it.
My parents went on vacation with us, but only a couple of times: When I was four I was sitting in the sand of Zaandvoort, we were camping by the Dutch North Sea.
When I was ten I went hiking on the Neckar, when I was twelve I went to a farm in the Fulda Valley, when I was thirteen I took a bus to the Costa Brava.
But the most spectacular of my five childhood vacations was my first flight.
In 1970 the Romanian airline Tarom flew us to the Black Sea with a Russian Ilyushin who probably came from war stocks - I was seven.
We screamed at each other all the time because it was so loud, after the flight I was completely traumatized.
But: the world opened up and everything was completely different!
The night was warm, the air smelled as sweet as flowers and of sugary pastries that poor-looking street vendors were selling at small mobile stalls.
On the beach you could collect jellyfish, and sometimes the militia, armed like soldiers, chased beach vendors in the jeep over the sand, who were hardly older than me: irritating, but exciting for us children!
When my father decided that it was a great idea to exchange foreign currency at night and black with some dealer instead of in a bank of the dictatorial state, my mother stood at the hotel window and bit nails.
I thought it was all great: there was so much to discover and a vacation was an adventure!
When the children left the house, nothing stopped us
Little did we baby boomers suspect that we would be the Reise generation.
Two wheels, four wheels, bus, train, plane: little by little, everything became more and more accessible and affordable.
In the nineties, Ryanair came along;
finally Fiona could visit her family in Ireland at least once a year.
Ten years later, competing low-cost airlines had undercut each other's prices to a level that made it cheaper to fly to Barcelona for the weekend than to take the train from Cologne to Hamburg once.
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We boomers, in particular, are taking advantage of this with increasing confidence.
Two or three short trips a year began to replace the one big summer vacation.
When the children left the house, nothing stopped us, the flights became longer, the world became smaller and smaller.
And then?
Came Covid.
We struggled for weeks with the decision to fly to Crete anyway.
I checked the virus situation there daily: calm.
Totally, completely, absolutely calmly.
Much, much quieter than here.
So we packed the suitcases.
Everything just collapsed behind the scenes of our little paradise
On the spot there was a great deal of emptiness, the English had to be in quarantine for 14 days after their return, soon the Greeks were left with only us Teutons.
"You Germans," said a trader in the old town of Heraklion, "have supported us for decades".
I was so flabbergasted that I couldn't think of an appropriate Chancellor's answer.
Everyone was incredibly friendly, everyone looked after.
Most of the guests were our age, of course: many of them were already retired and even more so in a phase of their working life in which they had few problems working from home.
So should a quarantine follow, what the heck?
We also enjoyed our stay - but everything was just collapsing behind the scenes of this little paradise.
Many already had no jobs and many did not know whether they would have one next year.
Everyone feared the winter, which will bring them nothing but minimal state support.
Frangískos, who calls himself Frank, offered me one evening to buy his nice, empty bar.
I'm kidding, sure.
But would it have been another if I had said yes?
Covid is making things tighter again
Tourism and the traveling lifestyle, to which we have become so used, turn out to be Potemkin villages, we now understand that: It has no endurance, no stability.
Our mobile freedom was a stroke of luck, a favor of the hour.
It is quite possible that this is just about to end.
I have no idea whether we could or would like to come back next year.
Traveling increasingly feels like saying goodbye to our beloved lifestyle.
Shortly after we are back, large parts of the Dutch coast are declared a risk area.
You couldn't even sit in the sand of Zaandvoort this autumn.
In retrospect, the possibilities in my life have only increased.
Covid is now making things tighter again.
Traveling is a luxury, I was always aware of that, but at some point I got used to it.
I didn't think it would be so difficult for me to do without it.
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